One form of carpet stretcher commonly used in the laying of carpet comprises a head with downwardly extending teeth to engage the carpet, a tailpiece and extensions through which pressure is applied to the opposite wall of the room to resist the stretching force, and manually operable power means interconnecting the head and the tailpiece to force the head away from the tailpiece thus developing a force to pull the carpet. Since the distance between the location at which the pulling force is to be applied to the carpet and the opposite wall will always be varying, sectional extension poles are employed to transmit the pulling force from the tailpiece to the opposite wall. These are large and cumbersome. They must be carried to the job and subsequently removed. Even on a single job, the usual situation requires that the length of the poles be changed from time to time in order to accommodate the various pulling requirements. Furthermore, on some jobs there may be obstructions, e.g., a piece of furniture which it is not practical to move, making it difficult or impossible to position the poles so as to apply the pressure force from the tailpiece to the opposite wall. A "kicker" is often employed by a carpet layer, but it is not an adequate substitute for a power stretcher.
The present invention is an attachment for a conventional power stretcher to transmit the stretching force as a pulling force applied to the floor ahead of the stretcher, in contrast to the present practice of applying it as a pressure force to the wall at the rear of the stretcher. This invention has the advantages that: it is relatively low in cost, even as compared to the extension poles commonly employed; it is small and lightweight to move about and much less cumbersome than the extension poles; it permits the power stretcher to be used at a location at which an extension pole to reach the opposite wall could not be employed.
In the present invention, a blade is hooked against the side of the tacking strip opposite to the area in which the carpeting is being laid, a pressure member is placed at the rear of the tailpiece of the carpet stretcher and a frame transmits the carpet stretching force from the pressure member to the blade and thus to the carpet strip immovably secured to the floor. I am aware that an apparatus known as a power restretcher has been available to carpet layers and that this re-stretcher employs a blade which is hooked onto the tacking strip in a fashion similar to the blade of my attachment. However, these re-stretchers are a relatively complicated piece of equipment, certainly as compared to the attachment of my invention. This means that the carpet layer has a substantial additional investment in a re-stretcher, along with the problem of getting it on the job and removing it when the job is done. My invention is not a carpet stretcher in and of itself, but rather is an attachment for the stretcher that the carpet layer already will have, the attachment increasing the versatility of that existing carpet stretcher at a modest cost.
Further objects and advantages become apparent from the following description and the drawings.